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The Path from Concept to Reality: Getting Information to the Warfighter in the Field John Kane 
deas for innovative technology often come from the challenges experienced by engineers in the course of their daily assignments. These ideas, however, must be pushed along the road to development—with all its ups and downs—to make it into the field. That's what happened to the Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR) Information Service (ISRIS) concept conceived back in 2000 after the Commander of the U.S. European Command Joint Analysis Center (JAC) asked MITRE to support the NATO Linked Seas 2000 Exercise. Specifically, the JAC needed engineering help to link to the Global Hawk Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) ground station located near Norfolk, Virginia, so it could receive, exploit, and disseminate Global Hawk imagery collected over Portugal during the exercise. Although the event was successful overall, two problems presented themselves: the lack of mission situational awareness information, and stovepiped access to sensor data. MITRE started looking for solutions—that is, a better way for warfighters to discover and access near-real-time data from airborne surveillance platforms using Web-enabled tools. A MITRE team began working on the internal R&D effort called ISRIS, which was designed to push Internet technology as close to the ISR sensor platform ground station as possible and to use that technology to provide warfighters with access to near-real-time ISR data via the operational battlefield networks. We developed an ISRIS prototype server that demonstrated to our sponsor how warfighters, using just a browser, could monitor Global Hawk and Predator UAV missions in an interactive map display and gain near-real-time access to sensor data as it was collected. The Road Widens Our work fit into the vision outlined in 2001 by John Stenbit, then the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Computers and Intelligence. He promoted his goal of augmenting the traditional "task-process-exploit-disseminate" approach with one that would "post before process" all data to the emerging Department of Defense Global Information Grid (GIG). [The GIG is a globally interconnected, end-to-end set of information capabilities, processes, and personnel for collecting, processing, disseminating, and managing information on demand to warfighters, policy makers, and support personnel.] This new process was termed "TPPU" or "task, post, process, and use," and was designed to help users make faster, more informed decisions in the field. MITRE saw how ISRIS could realize Stenbit's objective and presented the concept and prototype to him. His response was: "MITRE's ISRIS prototype really fits my vision of the future, where ISR information will be made available, shortly after it is collected, to the warfighters who need it the most. It's a great demonstration of what I call ‘post before process' for populating the network with new, dynamic sources of information needed to defeat the enemy." In July 2002, MITRE published a paper on ISRIS, explaining the concept and lessons learned, which was highlighted in the Jan/Feb 2003 volume of the ISR Journal. The Air Force used the paper to help defense contractors bidding on the Distributed Common Ground Station (DCGS) 10.2 contract understand the concept of task-post-process-use as it related to the ISR community. The next step in the prototype's development occurred when the U.S.
Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) decided to invest in the ISRIS concept
and push it toward operational use. In 2003, the Joint Staff approved
the seed funds to further develop the prototype. Most new ideas in the
Department of Defense (DOD) go through a competition for funds and resources
so that only the best ideas move forward. USJFCOM tasked MITRE to lead
ISRIS through the FY04 Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD)
Program of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Advanced Systems
and Concepts. Because of our subject matter expertise, the USJFCOM appointed MITRE as the MAJIIC ACTD Technical Manager. In this role, we are helping to evolve the original ISRIS concept, employing MITRE's wide range of technical capabilities to meet our sponsor's mission needs. Net-centric Technology MAJIIC's objective is to enhance U.S. Joint and Coalition ISR interoperability via the development, testing, and implementation of data standards, XML schemas, common programming interfaces, and leading-edge Web-based enterprise services. The ACTD endeavor consists of two tightly coupled efforts: The Multinational MAJIIC Project and the MAJIIC Horizontal Fusion Initiative. The MAJIIC Project is a collaboration among the United States and eight nations focused on the development, testing, and implementation of the technology and processes necessary to obtain seamless ISR data sharing in a coalition environment. The MAJIIC Initiative is part of the DOD's Horizontal Fusion Portfolio, an effort to develop, demonstrate, and field the first GIG Enterprise Services Service-Oriented Architecture on the operational Secret Internet Protocol Network. MAJIIC links ISR sensor platforms into the GIG via leading-edge Web services. We are heading the development of two ISRIS server configurations that support MAJIIC: ISRIS Multi-INT serves imagery, moving target indicator, and electronic intelligence sensor data from manned and unmanned airborne surveillance platforms. ISRIS Video serves video sensor data from UAV platforms. Both servers, which handle platform mission data as well, will be co-located with the ISR platform ground station or data downlink location in small-footprint deployable configurations for use in the field. This distributed architecture enables the ISR platform's data stream to be posted directly to the GIG, where the information can be accessed by all users. ISRIS automatically pre-processes ISR sensor and mission data to ensure that posted data is compliant with DOD Data Discovery Metadata Standards, security labeling standards, XML taxonomy standards, and data format standards. Supported standards (all critical for interoperability) will vary depending on the operating environment and will evolve as the GIG and coalition environments mature. One of our primary focuses was to provide support for low-bandwidth environments with solutions for imagery and video dissemination. Users can access ISRIS services via standard DOD-approved Web browsers. ISRIS will also service requests from network-based applications and value-adding systems that conform to the GIG, Coalition, and DCGS interface specifications and security policies. The Last Mile MAJIIC's ISRIS servers were demonstrated publicly for the first time at the Quantum Leap 2 demonstration in August 2004. The ISRIS Multi-INT server received live ISR data from an in-flight Joint STARS platform and provided near-real-time task-post-process-use access for the warfighters. The ISRIS video server disseminated simulated Predator video to warfighters using a standard Web browser. MAJIIC is scheduled to be operational in 2005 in support of the XVIII Airborne Corps' deployment to Iraq. MAJIIC will also be transitioned into future releases of the DCGS 10.2 Program of record. It took four years, and lots of energy, to go from concept to reality, and prototyping played a significant role along the way. We had the expertise and resources necessary to move forward, with sponsors removing barriers from the path. As a result, warfighters will soon have unfettered net-centric access to near-real-time ISR information in support of their time-critical missions. |
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| For more information, please contact John Kane using the employee directory. Page last updated: January 7, 2005 | Top of page |
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